


The Silkie Maiden

by RobberBaroness



Category: The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: F/F, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: Like hell is Elspeth going to watch her lover and her son die for the sake of prophecy.
Relationships: Human Woman/Silkie
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Once Upon a Fic 2020





	The Silkie Maiden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatAloneOne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/gifts).



Elspeth would never marry. She would keep her child close to her and scorn all suitors (if they ever came to a woman raising a bastard) and little Davey would grow fine and strong, and should he choose to swim, he would do so in perfect safety. Or perhaps she would marry, out of spite, and find the finest gunner in all the land and sew coats out of the skins of seals he brought home. But in that case, Davey would never be allowed near the water- she’d never teach him to swim, nor let any other would-be teacher near him, especially not eerie women with voices like gently splashing tides against the rocks, with white hair that curled and danced like foam, not comely but unforgettable to behold. She’d marry her gunner he’d kill the silkie maiden and Davey would grow to be a man and it would serve that sea-witch right for blessing and cursing her and then leaving her to live her life alone.

The wicked silkie girl had pressed a purse of gold onto her lap, worn green by its time in the sea, but in her poverty Elspeth had happily taken the gift whatever the price. And it had been a steep one indeed, though the silkie had not seen it that way. How could she? When a girl can see the future, how can she think of the pain that comes with sharing it? How can she think that, having kissed her, a human lover would weep to hear of the responsibility she would hold in a silkie maiden’s death? And the children of sea creatures die all the time- how could the silkie maiden know that it would kill Elspeth to hear a prediction of death for her own child?

“Though not born of my body,” the silkie maiden had said, “he’ll swim the foam like a true seal. For one day. For one glorious day. And when your husband shoots and takes our lives, you’ll mourn as a good mother ought, but he will have lived for one day as most human men can never dream. Is that not a good exchange?”

Elspeth had wept and torn her garments and begged and pleaded, and the silkie maiden had not understood her sorrow. It was only a prophecy, she insisted. She wished little Davey no harm. Was her own death not also predicted in this vision? Why should she want to die, far less see the death of an innocent child? But this way Elspeth was warned, and she would have all her time to mourn before the day came, so that it would not strike her as a terrible, causeless blow.

The kindness of the fair folk. The silkie maiden hadn’t had to spend the night with Elspeth, curled up against her with her skin soft and warm despite the cold of the ocean. She hadn’t had to whisper kind words to her before the killing blow with her prediction. She hadn’t had to kiss her, leaving her with a lasting memory of sweetness so that she would mourn the silkie maiden in addition to her lost son. But she’d done all those things nonetheless.

It would not come to pass. At least, not the way it had been predicted.

There were stories of seal brides. Anyone living by the shore had heard of them. Elspeth had never understood how any man could be so cruel as to hold a wife captive by stealing her second skin- it was a wicked thing to do, both to his poor kidnapped bride and to any children who might be left abandoned should their mother find her stolen seal coat. But Elspeth had not chosen to be cruel- it was the silkie maiden who had foretold doom and haunted her life and that of her child.

Perhaps she would marry a gunner, if he was handsome and kind and owned a fine house. And perhaps they would have more children together- a daughter, maybe. She would like to have a little girl. Or perhaps she wouldn’t and would live all her days alone. But one thing was for certain- when that summer day came in the future, when the selkie maiden came for the child, Elspeth would first invite her inside for a bit of food. And then she would touch her as they had once touched each other on the cliffs beneath the moonlight, and she would take her to bed and feel again her soft and warm human skin, as the seal skin dried by the fire.

And when the selkie maiden fell to sleeping, Elspeth would take the seal skin. She would never burn it- that would be too heartless, even to do to a woman who had ruined her life. But she would bury it beneath a tree, where neither the silkie nor young Davey would ever find it. And when she woke, the silkie maiden would not find her skin and not be able to swim the foam, and certainly not be able to take Davey with her to their deaths. And she would beg and cry for her sealskin to be returned, and Elspeth would remind her that she herself had cried and begged for Davey’s life to be spared and been denied in the ephemeral name of prophecy.

And the selkie maiden would stay with her, or go her own way. And Davey would live to grow old, or not. To be human was to be ignorant of how things would end. But like hell was Elspeth going to sit back and let things happen as prophesied, no matter how much she longed for the fair silkie maiden who had once offered comfort and curses to a woman nursing a bastard with an unknown father. Let the silkie maiden know what it was to not know the future. Let her live with that blessing and that curse. Let her know what it meant to lie with a woman and have her own future changed forever.

And let Davey find a wife and have children and live as he may, and let his silkie stepmother never take him into the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> I've loved this song since my dad first sang it to me and I burst out crying. I kind of like to think this story sets up the Heather Dale song "The Maiden and the Selkie"...


End file.
